Last weekend when my parents were in town, we took them to dinner and to karaoke, which is something I enjoy as much for the sociological value as for the goofy singing opportunities. And this guy got up and sang a song that’s not only bad, but always makes me grind my teeth in frustration, it’s so bad—”Brick” by the Ben Folds Five. Now the guy who sang it was really good, so props there, and my mom was enjoying it (probably because the guy singing it was so good), and she saw me making my “oh my god this song sucks beyond all telling” face—which is a pretty distinct expression on your average Insufferable Music Snob*—and asked me why I didn’t like the song. I weighed the various ways to phrase my objections to it and settled with, “Because the point of the song is that his girlfriend sucks for getting an abortion because it was such a downer for him. Boo-fucking-hoo. How dare you get pregnant on accident with my sperm.” And then I felt bad because my mom made a lemon face in agreement with me that these lyrics are indeed nasty, and she said, “Well, it’s pretty anyway.”**
In fact, the song may even be more self-centered and horrible than I put it to my mother. It’s indescribably mean, with the lyrics about how his girlfriend turned into this albatross around his neck with this abortion, or actually a brick. It’s all fun and games until you dare have an inconvenient moment of grief or a bad mood, I suppose. I would not be surprised if Ben Folds pats himself on the back while performing the song, though I’ve heard he plays the piano, which might mean he doesn’t have a free hand available for that. A more gracious interpretation is that he’s castigating himself for being a self-centered prick when his girlfriend probably needed him to chill for a bit, but I’m not feeling that interpretation at all.
I thought of that song while reading Courtney Martin’s bewildering article at Alternet today. I love Courtney and usually think her writing is interesting, and I certainly like how she briefly makes the point in the article that men probably feel lost after an abortion because masculinity standards make it hard for men to even begin to describe their feelings about sex, relationships, and especially accidental pregnancies. But that’s an issue with masculinity standards, not with abortion per se. I just don’t get the point of the article. That men should have a role in abortion? They do. Most women consult with the men who got them pregnant before they have an abortion. The waiting room surveys of men that Courtney references demonstrate that men are plentiful in waiting rooms at clinics that provide abortion. I’d guess that the majority of women include the men that knocked them up to the degree that he’s the single most important person for her throughout the process, driving her in the car, holding her hand, listening, helping her sort it out.
How can someone be included more than “single most important person”? The only way to include men more is to give them the final say, and that’s simply wrong. Not their bodies, not their choice.
Courtney references the fact that most abortion clinics don’t let people linger around the surgery room when you’re getting the procedure, but that’s for a good reason. First of all, it’s not like a birth. Even if you’re glad to have it over with, an abortion is not a good time. It’s basically a medical procedure and it’s treated like one. I don’t have my boyfriend in the room when I get a tooth drilled and he’s not necessary to have hanging around if I had to get my uterus suctioned. Using the birth model, where there’s a new baby and there’s a reason to be there (to see the baby during its first moments) is totally inappropriate.
From clinic workers I’ve talked to, there’s an additional reason not to let men in the room during the procedure, which is what I’d call the “Ben Folds phenomenon”, which is that the man—who has strong emotions for a legitimate reason—is leaning on his wife or girlfriend for emotional support so much that she can’t pay attention to her own needs or health during the actual procedure, because she’s too busy supporting him. The gender role where women are caretakers and men are cared for, at least in the emotional sense, is an unfair model to begin with, but it has real health implications in a situation where the woman needs more care than the man but can’t get for giving. In fact, this problem where women are so used to being caregivers that they aren’t receiving when they need it the most has motivated interest in creating “abortion doula” programs to fill the care gap for women that are getting abortions. I appreciate that an abortion is not a fun time for anyone, but the problem is that when we ask for more care for men during these times, we’re basically asking the women who are often themselves already languishing from lack of emotional support to give up even more when they don’t have it to give.
*All IMSes think they will hate karaoke, but every single one I’ve dragged to it got a huge kick out of it. The combination of hating on everyone who picks sucky songs, digging through the book to find that 2% of songs that are singable and analyzing why some people like to sing certain songs is pretty intoxicating.
**I left that alone.
117 Responses to “An ambitious attempt to avoid saying, “Suck it up””
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So how can you tell whether the song is an actual statement of what Ben Folds felt (during a real experience) or thought he’d feel (during an imagined experience), or whether it’s a portrait of the way a certain kind of young and self-centered man (who might have no relation to the singer/songwriter) would have felt?
You seem–with comments like “the point of the song is that his girlfriend sucks”, “It’s indescribably mean”, and “he’s castigating himself for being a self-centered prick”–to be operating on the automatic assumption that the perspective is that of Folds himself.
Do you listen to “Born in the USA” and conclude that Bruce Springsteen was treated badly when he returned from fighting in Vietnam?
I never really knew what that song was about, and now that I know, I’m going to try not to let it affect how much I like the song (which is a lot). Reading the lyrics, it comes across to me how it always has: a raw, painful, intense rendering of how the writer is feeling. Songs, poems, novels, should not be built around agendas or abandoned because they contain sentiments that are distasteful- what an anodyne world that would be. Lots of really great things contain streaks of really awful things. I still like ‘Gotta Be Starting Something’, regardless of anything Michael Jackson may have done. People have some really ugly thoughts sometimes- putting them into art does not make the art inherently bad.
I completely respect your decision not to like the song, and your reasons for doing so, but ultimately I agree with your mom.
I do believe that the song refers to a real incident, but if it bothers you that I used the shortcut, then imagine that I am saying, “The narrator of the song, who Folds gives every indication of approving of completely, is a self-indulgent prick who needs to learn some empathy.” Ben Folds could be a great guy personally, but his music portrays this self-indulgent nonsense, both in the music and in his lyrics.
Destructor, don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate the song because of the politics—how could I? It’s ultimately pro-choice, plus I’m really adverse to aesthetic Stalinism. I just really don’t like Ben Folds. I hated that song the first time I heard it and finding out what it’s about just added another layer of grimy color to my original dislike.
As an irreverent sidenote, Karen Moline’s Belladonna (a sort of feminist Count of Monte Cristo) was where I first heard the term “doula”. When the sadistic chief villain abducts the heroine, he makes her into his sex slave and says her new name is “Doula”, which is Greek for “handmaid” (as a nod to The Handmaid’s Tale, one assumes.)
Further research shows that yes, “doula” does mean “handmaid” in Greek, but a doula is a midwife rather than a concubine. I bet there were a lot of astonished looks on many faces when some midwives started calling themselves “doulas”.
I hate “Brick” for exactly that same reason — my reaction is always, “Oh, boo-hoo, your girlfriend was soooo mean for getting pregnant! Doesn’t she know how much more her pregnancy affected you?”
The only halfway defense I ever heard of it was, “Well, at least he was being honest.” You know what? No. There’s being honest and there’s being an asshole, and that song definitely crosses the line into assholism.
Note to guys: if your first thought after hearing bad news from your wife/girlfriend is, “But what about MMMEEEE!?!?!!” you need to STFU until you have an adult reaction.
(Personally, as my SO just spend four and a half months helping me administer subcutaneous fluid every night to our dying cat, I don’t have too many worries on this front. Yet another advantage to not settling down until you’re in your 30s.)
Reading the lyrics, it comes across to me how it always has: a raw, painful, intense rendering of how the writer is feeling.
Yes, he’s feeling that his pregnant girlfriend is a brick around his neck that’s dragging him down. Hence the title. And then she senses his distancing himself from her and withdraws emotionally as well, which of course is her fault, too.
I’m willing to hear all kinds of songs about all kinds of horrible people (like “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” the cheeriest serial killer song ever). What I don’t like is having the songwriter and/or performer working so hard to make me feel sorry for him/her when s/he is clearly the asshole in the situation. You may not like Johnny Cash when he sings, “Delia’s Gone,” but at least he’s not asking for your pity. He’s just telling you what happened.
Dirty Davey:
“People ask me what this song’s about… I was asked about it a lot, and I didn’t really wanna make a big hairy deal out of it, because I just wanted the song to speak for itself. But the song is about when I was in high school, me and my girlfriend had to get an abortion, and it was a very sad thing. And, I didn’t really want to write this song from any kind of political standpoint, or make a statement. I just wanted to reflect what it feels like. So, anyone who’s gone through that before, then you’ll know what the song’s about.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_%28song%29
Although in fairness to him, the chorus was written by someone else . . .
When I read this article it struck me that she really could have done a lot better in finding her interviews than the guys she picked — and if the guys she talked to were the standard-bearers for the movement to give men more “say” in the abortion procedure, then that’s all you need for why this should remain 100% the woman’s decision.
One guy makes a last-minute effort to get his life straightened out and complains that she wasn’t so overjoyed by a temporary improvement in his credit score that she decided to tie herself down to him permanently by having his child.
One guy explains that he could only make lame jokes about the abortion and then gets all upset that she didn’t communicate with him more about the process.
Self-centered doesn’t even begin to describe what they’re doing — and good for you, Amanda — for pointing out that these guys are exactly the reason that men aren’t allowed in the surgery room: because they have to make it all about themselves.
I’d cut it a little slack. For one thing, it’s not indicating he’s saying mean, bad things. He’s thinking and feeling these things, and you know, we all feel all kinds of selfish crap. But his actions, like buying the flowers, indicate he’s trying to do the right things, at least initially.
Being generous, I read it more as an immature realization of existential aloneness. The abortion is the thing that makes him see that aloneness in both of them. The connection he thought they had was ephemeral. It’s the way of passionate young love. We want to believe it’s the answer, but in the morning we still wake up with ourselves.
But, since it’s art, and since art is about both the singer and the listener, the he’s-a-selfish-prick interpretation is totally okay. Certain songs inspire certain visceral reactions, and I’ve definitely experienced that reaction myself.
This reminds me of an advice column letter I read once (Salon?) where a guy wrote in saying that his marriage was irretrievably harmed by mean things his wife had said to him while she was laboring. He claimed to love the child, and his wife, but he had been hurt by the things that she said. He was amazed that the doctors and nurses didn’t find the situation out of the ordinary and dared to tell him to let it go. He COULD forgive his wife for what she had said, but not for thinking that she didn’t have to grovel and apologize. What should he do?
I don’t recall the advice given, but him being ambushed by a gang of guys with tire irons seemed appropriate.
It amazes me when people reveal that they have no sense that the real world involves giving and taking, and that just because someone made you feel bad, doesn’t mean they did anything wrong.
Hmm. My take on the article was pretty different. I think that the guys she interviewed were pretty much asses, but at the same time I thought that she made a lot of good points and handled the subject well. It inspired me to extensively muse in a post, anyway.
In modern American midwifery, a doula is absolutely not a midwife.
From the Wiki article: me and my girlfriend had to get an abortion
That’s an interesting way to put it.
ick! poor grammar and phallocentrism all in one, annejumps! i do believe i have the vapors.
I’m so much happier with this song than with “All I Want To Do is Make Love To You” by Heart, a sappy-sounding love song justifying the narrator’s adultery by explaining that the narrator’s husband is sterile.
People seem to be ignoring that the “mature” response to all this is not automatic; that’s why it requires maturity. Resentment is normal, and the mature thing to do is overcome that resentment.
Well, she’s the closest thing to it, then.
I’d cut it a little slack.
I think the story told by the lyrics is more complicated than some here credit, although Ben Folds still comes across to me as a a bit of a self-centered ass.
They both want the baby and a life together, but they don’t dare, because they’re teenagers and afraid of their parents. They have a secret abortion, but they’re both emotionally damaged afterwards–her in particular, to the point where their parents realize what must have happened,and an angry confrontation with the parents ensues, leaving them each to face the future alone . . .
http://www.benfoldsfive.com/lyrics/whatever_03.html
I’m with you, Amanda. As a teenager I was a huge Ben Folds fan (”One Angry Dwarf” was my theme song for a long time) but “Brick” annoyed the fuck out of me from the minute I first heard it. I wanted to like it- I wanted to be supportive of a song that put the topic of abortion out on the mainstream airwaves. But I couldn’t, because a) it’s musically bland and whingey, and b) comparing your girlfriend to a brick around your neck because she got an abortion is a fucking assholish thing to do.
I still feel a little conflicted about it, though, because I have actually heard it used by teenaged boys to talk about how they feel about abortion, and the possibility of their girlfriend requiring one. Which was amazingly radical, at that moment- in my life at the time abortion (birth control in general) was something that girls panicked about, talked about, learnt about, coped with. Boys just showed up with condoms and were maybe, theoretically, liable for half the cost of an abortion if one were ever necessary.
So I kind of like that it gives boys who might have taken the privileged path of never having to think about abortion (because it’s all her problem) a fairly unthreatening way to think & talk about it. But it’s still a sucky song, and it’s narrator is still an asshole, and I wish those boys had some other song to tune their feelings into that actually involved some, I don’t know, acknowledgement of the fact that the person going through the most trauma in this scenario is someone else.
Amanda, I had actually assumed he meant “brick” not in the idea of “weight” but in the expression “you’re a real brick” i.e., you’re strong, dependable. She is strong, going through with it, but he cannot deal and is “drowning” struggling with the abortion and the end of their relationship. Which is a much more positive interpretation, though of course, others may disagree. And also, in the song the character does not *say* to the girl that he’s drowning, which could mean he is doing the decent thing and *not* making it about him. Which to me, made it both honest and honorable, as a song, however overdone the angst. I think it’s actually good writing when a character faces their less-admirable/less-mature thoughts honestly.
Now you could certainly say that guys who oppose women’s right to choose have seized on the song as a way of saying “what about the menz?” but I don’t know if that’s actually borne out by what the character/Ben/whoever does in the song.
Blue Jean, Doula is (by doulas themselves; I can’t speak for the actual translation) interpreted to mean simply “servant” or “helper,” and does not refer to a midwife, but to a (usually) woman who provides emotional support to the woman in labor, and sometimes helps her with the baby afterward.
Midwives, for the most part, are trained and certified in prepartum, labor and birth, and postpartum medical care; doula roles can resemble that of exercise coaches, babysitters, therapists, or advocates, depending on what the woman needs and what the doula is capable of. Doulas do not provide medical care. Many women have a midwife and more than one doula at their birth, and some prefer them to the presence of husbands/boyfriends.
An abortion doula is an excellent idea, and really, there are just very few if any guys who would be good support for a woman going through the procedure itself. Powerful emotions may be involved that he can’t really comprehend, since he will never have to choose whether or not to create a new person inside his body. That’s not his fault, but it’s a reality men need to deal with. They cannot understand what it means to carry that responsibility with you.
From the Wiki article: “me and my girlfriend had to get an abortion”
That’s an interesting way to put it.
Well, but you have to admit it’s better than, “my girlfriend had to get an abortion,” isn’t it? Shows a certain acceptance of responsibility . . .
That’s an interesting way to put it.
One woman getting her uterus scrapped=one man getting a mildly painful hangnail in objective pain-counting terms.
Em, that’s beyond generous. She’s clearly not strong, since he portrays her as balled up and crying and generally being a huge drag. Which is fine—you get to be a drag when you get an abortion. What people around you have to do in order to be decent human beings is to live with the fact that you are a drag right now and that’s just the way it is, and they don’t bitch about it or make it about them. Plus, you juxtaposition “brick” and “drowning” and visions of corpses and the Mafia just spring to mind.
I never said he opposed the right to choose. The song is more about how something that’s basically about women still needs to be about men. Men can be all about the right to choose while still demanding that their girlfriends’ abortions be about their suffering as if they’re the ones who just had a painful outpatient procedure.
I had actually assumed he meant “brick” not in the idea of “weight” but in the expression “you’re a real brick” i.e., you’re strong, dependable.
According to Mr. Folds, quoted in the Wikipedia article linked above, the part about the brick and drowning was added by another song writer later, after they decided that the song needed a metaphor to be commercial.
That’s great. I don’t really care about how the song came to be. I interpret what is there, not what could have been in another set of circumstances. Whatever Folds is like personally, in a song where he is the narrator, he is an absolute prick.
this is what i had always assumed, as well. “you’re a brick” doesn’t mean you’re a drag; it means “you’re strong and solid.”
That’s great. I don’t really care about how the song came to be. I interpret what is there, not what could have been in another set of circumstances. Whatever Folds is like personally, in a song where he is the narrator, he is an absolute prick.
Is it legitimate to judge a songwriter by the narrator’s voice in a particular song?
Besides, I read the song lyrics as mutual alienation - the death of a relationship - rather than “my girlfriend’s an albatross”.
I’m judging the song by the narrator’s voice and the music itself. And yes, I think judging the song by the content is legitimate. I don’t care about the person outside it. I am judging the song. Which is about a guy who’s being a dick because his girlfriend had the nerve to be fertile when he fucked her. For the purposes of criticism, consider “Ben Folds” a narrator of a story. He could be entirely fictional, and my interpretation of what the song is about wouldn’t change a bit. This isn’t so hard to understand.
Amanda,
Usually I find what you have to say incredibly well thought out and well written, yet here I have to disagree with you. If I understand you correctly, you’re saying the narrator of the song is an asshat because he feels bad about his girlfriend having an abortion. I am not quite sure if I see where you make the jump from this to him making it all about himself. I understand the lyrics as a 17 year old kid feeling pretty shitty but as other commenters pointed out, he’s just thinking these feelings not vocalizing them to his gf. Asking any 17 year old to not have a few selfish thoughts is pretty extreme or maybe not, if you’re, as you freely admit, a music snob. Give the “kid” a break.
Is it legitimate to judge a songwriter by the narrator’s voice in a particular song?
Certainly if you took half the songs on Year Zero at face value, you’d assume the author supported an authoritarian, ultra-right wing government, wheras if you listen to the album as a whole it appears to be more of a critique of those views.
I just listened to ‘Brick’ to see if knowing what it was really about changed how I saw it, and I still found it an affecting song. So the narrator of the song may be a big jerk, but he’s being honest, unflatteringly honest, about his feelings and that’s an important part of art, too.
Ok, now I’ve actually read the article, and I don’t think anybody’s arguing that women should have to tend to men’s feelings while dealing with the abortion or that men’s and women’s experience of abortion are going to be equivalent. But it is important to acknowledge these feelings for men.
Here’s the thing about feelings. Our feelings are pretty much always selfish. Gut level, it’s selfish. Empathy, sympathy and compassion are higher order emotional experiences, and they develop (one hopes) with maturity. But the “all-about-me” aspect is always going to be there.
When my ex was going through a medical issue, it was very stressful, and my first emotional response was “fuck you, why are you doing this to me.” I didn’t express that, and I tried not to let it influence my actions because some of that higher order stuff kicked in, and I understood that this had to be about him. But I most certainly felt it, and I had to have a way of dealing with those feelings (I dumped it all into my journal).
Same thing with men and abortion. It’s perfectly natural for their feelings to be selfish. It’s not fair to criticize that. What is fair is to want a man to have the maturity to put his partner’s needs first because she’s got the real burden of the abortion. We can criticize words and actions. That’s totally fair. I don’t think it’s fair to jump all over guys for acknowledging after the fact that they had these feelings.
Further research shows that yes, “doula” does mean “handmaid” in Greek,
Well, to be precise, it is the feminine of “doulos,” and means “slave” in Greek.
It is thus a great deal more appropriate to call a fictional sex-slave a doula than to call a midwife one.
Arrrrrggggghhhhh! I came too late to the party.
Emjaybee had it totally correct. Ben wasn’t saying she was a brick that was drowning him - he was giving her props for being strong when he was feeling like he couldn’t handle it as well.
Ben is great, and I always thought this song was great too, because he was saying how hard the process was, but that his girlfriend was so much better at handling it than he was. And there’s nothing wrong with a guy saying how he feels about the abortion. It’s not fun for anyone, and he’s not telling her what to do in the song - personally I don’t think Ben would try to tell anyone what to do. He doesn’t strike me as that kind of guy.
And, I’m glad my BF was there with me when I went in for the abortion back in 1995 (in the waiting room) because I really needed the shoulder to lean on when we had to fight our way out of the protesting crowds, and my BF at the time wasn’t a small dude.
I’m judging the song by the narrator’s voice and the music itself. And yes, I think judging the song by the content is legitimate. I don’t care about the person outside it. I am judging the song.
You may want to be a bit clearer on the distinction then when you write:
“In fact, the song may even be more self-centered and horrible than I put it to my mother. It’s indescribably mean, with the lyrics about how his girlfriend turned into this albatross around his neck with this abortion, or actually a brick. It’s all fun and games until you dare have an inconvenient moment of grief or a bad mood, I suppose. I would not be surprised if Ben Folds pats himself on the back while performing the song, though I’ve heard he plays the piano, which might mean he doesn’t have a free hand available for that. A more gracious interpretation is that he’s castigating himself for being a self-centered prick when his girlfriend probably needed him to chill for a bit, but I’m not feeling that interpretation at all.”
I dunno - probably it is Ben Fold’s own voice; pop songs don’t strike me as a usual vehicle for ironic detachment and unreliable narrators.
I still reserve judgement about whether he’s describing his girlfriend being evil for getting an abortion or mourning the death of the relationship, but that’s a matter of personal interpretation. I’ll have to see if I can actually *listen* to the thing.
I’m having trouble embracing the brick-as-source-of-strength interpretation. The lyrics say, “she’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly”. That interpretation makes the line seem like a badly mixed metaphor, while the brick-as-weight interpretation makes the metaphor actually come out right. So fans of the song are faced with a dilemma — either the lyrics are badly put together, or the song is shallow in an entirely non-self-aware way.
Not that I’m a Ben Folds detractor in general. “The Last Polka” is good stuff.
Wow. Amanda, you generally have a way of making me see the other side even on the rare occasions when I disagree with you…but this strikes me as a pretty wild overreaction. Does a man forfeit the right to have his own feelings when his girlfriend has an abortion? Beyond the chorus (which, if not entirely sensitive, is at least honest), is there a single instance in the lyrics of the narrator acting like a prick? He buys her flowers, paces the parking lot anxiously, and observes that she’s feeling alone, as is he. Shall we break out the torches and pitchforks?
If you want to make a case against a Ben Folds song, “Song for the Dumped” is far more misogynistic. (Though I admit I like that one too.)
Well, em, “doula” does have “female slave” as one of its definitions, but modern day doulas trace it back to “female servant who’s a midwife” as seen here, even if that’s not how modern doulas work.
If Mr. Villain really wanted to be accurate, he would have called his sex slave “Concubine”, or “Pilegesh”, “Auletide” or best of all, “Haterea” (companion).*
*Yes, Firefly fans, just like on TV, only these “companions” weren’t always free women.
Remind me never to discuss caregiver stress with y’all. Jeebus.
Ben Folds? Seriously?
I’m with Kimmitt and Phoebe Fay.
It is entirely possible that I’m biased because I love Ben Folds (not this crap song mind you, but his actual good music) but I feel like this is a very honest expression of the kinds of emotions that people feel in such a situation. I heard that song the first time when my grandfather was dying and it captured the way I felt which was a mixture of sadness and guilt. He required a LOT of constant care. Obviously he was the one dying and he was the one in physical pain, but that doesn’t mean it had no impact on me. I experienced feelings of resentment and even sometimes anger toward him. I was there for him, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t times when I felt like the situation was drowning me.
In the song, I get the feeling that he feels overwhelmed by what they are doing. It sounds to me like he is being there for her, doing “the right thing” but that he feels resentful, scared, overwhelmed and alone. My 17 year old relationships sure weren’t well equipped to deal with much of anything and I see that sense of confusion and being out of his league in the song. No matter how he felt it seems like he was there for her, do we also expect men to have no emotional response of their own to abortion? Are they horrible if they have mixed feelings, even if they keep those feelings to themselves, support the woman, let her make the choice, and stick by her through the process?
I guess I’m not sure what is it exactly that we want from men when we have abortions. Yes, I would expect a man to acknowledge that it is ultimately my choice but I don’t see the benefit in claiming that they have no right to have conflicted or strong emotional responses to abortion.
Normally I think your opinions are well thought out but this opinion is one of gendered self centeredness. It seems, though this may not be true, that you think that men should have very few emotions about an abortion. This is consistent with the idea that men shouldn’t be the deciding factor in whether a women is allowed to have an abortion. But it seems unduly ideological. I’ve never had to discuss with my girlfriend an abortion in real terms because we’ve never been in that situation but I can imagine that it would suck in general for her mostly but also me to go through with the whole issue.
I don’t imagine women are going I’m so golly gee lucky to have an abortion like that onion article and its absurd to say that someone’s song about their feelings during their girl friends abortion is somehow the height of assholishness.
Hmm. I mean, I hate Ben Folds Five (and it would take much more than a blog post and no small amount of cultural and psychological analysis to say why that is). But I don’t quite see why the lyrics or the sentiment they express are objectionable in themselves. I mean, let’s say a girl & a guy are dating, and (for whatever reason) the girl unexpectedly becomes pregnant. And they should have talked all about what they would do when this happens, but maybe they didn’t? And the guy’s kind of excited; maybe he really likes the girl and is excited about the idea of having a kid (he’s naive, sure), and apparently he tells some people and gets some congratulatory presents. But then, the girl doesn’t want to have a baby, and it’s not clear if they talk about it or what, but ultimately he knows it’s her decision; while she’s having the abortion he buys her flowers in some kind of gesture of love, cliché and maybe not very insightful into her psychological state, but by all appearances sincere. But still, on some level, he’s sad—maybe he thought they were on the same wavelength about their desire & readiness to have a kid, maybe he just feels the same sense of a vanished possibility that people feel when their life suddenly moves in a different direction, or maybe he even has some vestigial fetus attachment because he was raised by crazy sky fairy parents who think fetuses are people. And it’s hard to let go of the sadness, especially because he knew it was really her decision to make, he knew he needed to be supportive, he knew she was going through way more than he was, so maybe he didn’t feel like he could talk about whatever it was about the whole thing that made him sad. And that ends up feeling like a brick around his neck; their carefree happy relationship has changed and he isn’t angry at her so much as sad that things seem to have changed. What is there to criticize in that?
Again, the song sucks, the lyrics are pretty boring & not especially insightful or anything. And if it purported to be a statement of the most important emotional issues surrounding abortion, it would be flatly ridiculous from that perspective. But taking it for what it is, a basically crappy song about some guy’s flawed but not obviously meanspirited or antifeminist thoughts as he goes through this fucked up situation, I don’t quite see what the criticism is supposed to be.
Just to be clear, though, Ben Folds sucks, with or without his Five, sucks.
You’re kidding, right?
“…this opinion is one of gendered self centeredness [sic]. It seems, though this may not be true, that you think that men should have very few emotions about an abortion.”
This is not even remotely what has been claimed, and your accusation of “gendered self centeredness” (maybe you wanted to say “selfishness”?) is difficult to read with a straight face. No, gendered selfishness is the man in the situation wrapping himself up in his own (legitimate) feelings to the point that he burdens her with them. She’s already dealing with her own crap, getting his as well is the opposite of helpful. She’s the one getting the abortion (you think things are tough for you? Boo-hoo. Believe me, she’s got it MUCH worse).
The point is that you ARE allowed to have feelings. You are NOT allowed to make them her problem. Lots of men don’t seem to understand that the world doesn’t revolve around their feelings. On the other hand, being supportive of her emotional needs IS your problem. Why? Because SHE’S the one getting the abortion!
You can unload, if you must, with other folks. With her, you must indeed suck it up and deal so that you can be helpful to her.
By the way, I’ve seen this happen (man having all these feelings and wanting to talk about them with the woman involved), and the gentleman in question managed to make things a lot uglier and more dramatic because of his poor hurt little self. Guys often don’t seem to get that their emotions are not the issue here. This gentleman, in particular, was all concerned about the “power she suddenly had over his future.” Yeah, life is scary. Grow up.
You’re kidding, right?
“…this opinion is one of gendered self centeredness [sic]. It seems, though this may not be true, that you think that men should have very few emotions about an abortion.”
This is not even remotely what has been claimed, and your accusation of “gendered self centeredness” (maybe you wanted to say “selfishness”?) is difficult to read with a straight face. No, gendered selfishness is the man in the situation wrapping himself up in his own (legitimate) feelings to the point that he burdens her with them. She’s already dealing with her own crap, getting his as well is the opposite of helpful. She’s the one getting the abortion (you think things are tough for you? Boo-hoo. Believe me, she’s got it MUCH worse).
The point is that you ARE allowed to have feelings. You are NOT allowed to make them her problem. Lots of men don’t seem to understand that the world doesn’t revolve around their feelings. On the other hand, being supportive of her emotional needs IS your problem. Why? Because SHE’S the one getting the abortion!
You can unload, if you must, with other folks. With her, you must indeed suck it up and deal so that you can be helpful to her.
By the way, I’ve seen this happen (man having all these feelings and wanting to talk about them with the woman involved), and the gentleman in question managed to make things a lot uglier and more dramatic because of his poor hurt little self. Guys often don’t seem to get that their emotions are not the issue here. This gentleman, in particular, was all concerned about the “power she suddenly had over his future.” Yeah, life is scary. Grow up.
re: Alternet article, I always thought that men weren’t allowed past the waiting area at Planned Parenthood mainly for security reasons. I had to get EC a few years ago at PP in NYC and they weren’t letting anyone but the women getting services past the lobby. This was quite a few years ago, so my memory is a bit hazy, but I’m pretty sure that even partners of women receiving prenatal care weren’t allowed to go in with them. I asked my nurse why and she said it was mainly security concerns. And maybe that is unfair to the men who want to be supportive, but I’m not about to lose sleep over these poor guys’ hurt feelings.
As far as Ben Folds, I cannot stand his music. I agree with Amanda’s interpretation of the song, but I’m biased and am only too willing to have it proven to me that Ben Folds is the biggest prick in music.
Quoted of Ben Folds in Wikpedia: “me and my girlfriend had to get an abortion”
I pasted that to comment on before others hit on it, but I think its still worth mentioning again.
I have no idea why on earth a man’s feelings have any validity at all in the case of a woman’s pregnancy. C’mon people! It is a fetus in her body, a parasite inside her which he cannot see, feel, hear, touch or know. Without disclosure by the woman, the man cannot make any connection and has no connection in anyway to that fetus.
Once the sperm makes its exit from his body, his part of the program is over, unless he is called to become involved. Even then, his involvement hinges upon the extent of cooperation afforded by the pregnant woman.
That many would see otherwise, brings in focus for me, how women still are not viewed as anything more than property born to serve the interests and needs of men.
If one sees and treats a woman as a sovereign individual, with full rights as such, then one would understand that any involvement in decisions which effect said sovereignty should be exclusively hers.
A man cannot see, feel, touch or even begin to know the fetus growing inside her. It is not a person, has no rights and most important, asks nothing of the man and takes nothing from him, save for some sperm.
I never knew the song was about that, I always did find the lyrics a bit puzzling and self centered. I attempted to interpret is as a song about depression, I misinterpreted the line, “Cause I was tired of lying” as “Cause I was tired of life.” But the other parts made no sense to me, never did I think it about abortion. But then I’m kind of out of touch with those younger folks and pop culture.
Even so, I found the line, “She a brick and I’m drowning slowly” to be difficult to read, such as the feeling when someone is overly emotionally dependent and the confusion that results in such a relationship.
It is also overly drippy and syrupy and the slow tempo and whining voice can induce sleep while driving.
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I had exactly the same reaction to this freakin’ song the first time I heard it as Amanda. But now I’d like to share with you a song about abortion that I expect you will never have the privilege to hear but now you can at least look for it if you want (it’s a Canadian Indie song by a long defunct band, and I think the best lyrics having to do with abortion ever — small wonder.) And you anti-choice folks… sorry, but they have been broken up a long time, so you probably can’t threaten them to fall in your bullshit line.
Clinic — Crash Vegas (the Late Great)
Got to go to the clinic
Just to see myself undone
Body’s got this trouble keeping down what’s keeping in
I just wish I could feel something
This isn’t murder
This is my ticket out of here
Job well done
No pleasure from your pathetic tiny thumb
Well I guess the joke’s on me
Free, I can fly
Free, I will fly
Gone, it’s lost, burned into the system
Joined hands with your DNA
No, I couldn’t wash it, I couldn’t scrub it off
I’ve got one choice, go for the door
Free, I can fly
Free, free, I can fly from you
I will fly from you
I will fly
Mother cousin of this morphine
Black ribbon Celebration
It’s beautiful, it’s everywhere
Gone, quick, clipped
I know these hands will release me
Free, I can fly
Free, free, I will fly from you
I can fly from you
I will fly…
Well, the song is definitely maudlin. The lyrics don’t really bother me, though. The singer resents his girlfriend because he can’t come to grips with his own feelings about a shitty situation that isn’t really her fault (at least, not any more than it is his, or their parents’), which results in mutual feelings of alienation. The sentiment is entirely plausible, and I’m going to take a wild guess and say that we’ve all had similar feelings at some point.
I’d always read the song as ‘dude feels guilty and horrible for causing his girlfriend lots of trouble/pain’, but I was being too generous. Had that been the case, the refrain would have been ‘I’m a brick and she’s drowning slowly’.
emjaybee said:
Okay, I feel like a total lunkhead for never realizing the song was even about an abortion until I read this thread. I just thought it was some dude whining because the relationship was ending and he couldn’t handle it but she could. Only she wasn’t going to be politely Dido “White Flag” on him. She was going to go all Alanis “You Oughta Know” on him and he knew it was coming. I guess the song wasn’t good enough for me to pay attention to the “her number called” part of the lyrics. You’d think that hearing something 3,507 times daily in the late ’90s would familiarize you with its subject matter a little better. My bad.
Anyway, I think emjaybee’s post was fairly spot-on, now that I know what the premise was. Only I’m not so sympathetic. That’s why I’m with Amanda on him being a self-absorbed assmunch. Now that I get it, I realize that it’s about a guy who’s going through a really heavy, traumatic experience and the hardest thing is that he’s not at the center of it and no one is kissing his boo boo. Instead, his stupid knocked-up girlfriend gets all the street cred. So he’s gotta write a petulant little song to let the world know what a pain in the ass she was.
After all these years, I’m glad to know that I had good reason to hate that song.
The line of the song that always really bugged me was “can’t you see it’s not me your dying for.” Oh, yeah, big boy? You gonna give birth yourself and raise that kid on your McD’s income or something? Ugh. But it was always a little muddied up in my head who exactly he was addressing or from who’s perspective that line was supposed to be coming from, I don’t know.
I was more irritated that for weeks, months, you could not get AWAY from this song when it debuted. I used to call it the “Daily Brick Allotment”; it seemed that every radio station had to play it at least four times.
On the topic of presence during the surgery: I am not sure about boyfriends, but certainly someone should be allowed to be there. Sorry Amanda, but having an abortion is NOT like having a tooth drilled.
I was there for one of my friends, literally held her hand during the procedure (her boyfriend was overseas). I don’t ever want to have an abortion, who does? but if I have to, I want someone who knows me and supports me to be there. Of course, the person has to be 100% supportive of the patient, which leaves the needy boyfriend out of the picture.
I didn’t know men weren’t routinely allowed in the surgery room. During my abortion, my boyfriend was there to hold my hand. He flew in just to be there (and to take care of me in the days before and after).
What was annoying, though, was that since I appeared to be fine (and I was, mostly, though I was uncomfortable) both my boyfriend and the “counsellor” who’s job was also ostensibly to be there for me, mostly ignored me during the abortion itself and talked to one another instead.
The song isn’t just about how the abortion affected him it’s about how the abortion affected both of them and their relationship. Google the lyrics. The third verse is all about the aftermath.
I remember them playing “Brick” at my junior prom. Apparently no one bothered to find out what the song was about.
I doubt that you’re trying to imply that the man has no obligation or responsibility (which would, after all, be a “connection”) which stems for causing the presence of said fetus–say, being partly responsible for the child if she decides to carry it to term. Are you? Yes, it’s obviously her body and her choice, but isn’t it a little much to say that the man “has no connection in anyway”?Amanda, just wait a little while–”Chocolate Rain” will be coming to every damned karaoke place in the country before you know it. Now how’s that for cryptic lyrics?
You know, I grew up on college radio (you want to talk about Ben Folds being an asshole, when I hear that name I think “Song for the Dumped”), and I’m not sure I heard Brick. When Amanda wrote saying “it reminds me of the song Brick” I was thinking “what, the Commodores? The fuck… that’s an AWESOME song!”
Amanda isn’t saying “Ben Folds is a prick because he wrote this song” she’s saying “the likelihood that someone could write such a horrible song is in fact, a prick, is high in my opinion.” That’s different. You can like someone’ music and still think they’re an asshole. We don’t all have to be best friends with people we’ll never meet.
Mike, if you can’t tell the difference between a man having the right to have a feeling and a man having the right to demand that his feelings are more important than everyone else’s, no matter what, then there’s not much I can do to help you. I’m not saying men should forfeit their rights to their feelings. I’m saying that the Ben Folds “god, women having feelings is such a drag, since they’re supposed to spend all their waking hours comforting me” syndrome is what men need to get over, especially in situations like abortion, where it’s really about her in the end.
You may want to be a bit clearer on the distinction
Nah, the distinction was clear to anyone who’s not grasping for a reason to get mad at me for picking on a band they like.
Phoebe, you’re missing my point. I’m not saying men can’t have feelings. I’m saying they are obligated to act like adults and not make things worse for women that are, by any reasonable measure, worse off than them. The reason a lot of guys want to go into the surgery room is they feel bad and want their girlfriend to continue catering to their bad feelings during a period where she’s got so much on her mind (uterus suckage, remember?) that they simply shouldn’t, for their own health, be making their boyfriend or husband their number 1 priority.
My point is that during the abortion process, men are already number two. To get their feelings any more catered to, they would have to be promoted to number one priority. Sure, she’s getting her uterus suctioned, but she needs to be rubbing his back, he’s suffering! No. I’m sorry if some men want that while their wives or girlfriends are getting abortions. Those men need to be grown-ups and, you know, actually out there buying the flowers if they need something to occupy their minds during the procedure.
Requoting kate quoting Ben Folds: “Quoted of Ben Folds in Wikpedia: me and my girlfriend had to get an abortion’”. That’s what I object to. He did not actually get an abortion. But in his sentence structure, he not only got one, he’s the major issue here. That’s male entitlement in a nutshell—”Sure, your uterus is getting scraped and you live in a world where you will have people imply you’re a baby-killing slut for the rest of your life, but what about MEEEEEEEEE?”
I’ve come late to the party, but anyway.. Amanda, when I first heard this song I was about a quarter as politically as I am now, and your interpretation was the first that occurred to me. I can’t figure a way to make the “brick” of the song be “strength” rather than “a readily-available weight that people tie to other people when they want to drown them.”
Plus, a friend of mine who was on the outs with his girlfriend at the time the song came out constantly referred to her as “Brick” for a while (no abortion, he was just pissed at her for being boring or something). It seems to have been the standard interpretation for all I can remember.
While it may be true that some men would make it all about themselves if invited into the surgery room, I don’t think it’s true of even most men. I think if asked, most women having abortions would elect to have their partner present. Despite my story above, I’m still glad my boyfriend was there, and would make the same decision again.
The counselor urged me to be very sure I wanted him there. She wanted to make sure it was my decision, not his. She also wanted to make sure I wasn’t bringing him in there to punish him or display my martyr status; apparently some women tend to exaggerate the pain for the benefit of the audience, according to the counselor. Or maybe she was just an unsympathetic bitch. I wasn’t a big fan of this particular counselor.
While it may be true that some men would make it all about themselves if invited into the surgery room, I don’t think it’s true of even most men.
I’m deferring to the experiences of clinic workers who know the ratios that would require a blanket ban. Maybe it’s worse in some communities than others. Until a clinic worker pointed that out to me, Dr. Confused, I thought that boyfriends would generally be there at the behest of the women getting the abortions. I can’t fathom a boyfriend accompanying me for something like that unless I asked him, which I wouldn’t do. But I made the false assumption that I had a good sample of male attitudes in my life on this issue, and was corrected by a clinic worker in another thread where that question came up. No, it turns out a lot of men insist on being there, because this is a big deal and they’re having a problem not being the center of attention when a big deal comes up. (Which made me think of this song at the time, and go, “Ooooooooh.”) Take it for what it’s worth. I’m actually really glad your boyfriend came to support you without fussing. I think current squeeze would go if I asked, but I can’t imagine anyone from the past doing anything but giving me the stinkeye for involving him in something so personal and unpleasant. I didn’t watch my ex get a vasectomy, you know? I gave him a ride, but that’s what friends are for.
Amanda, I defer to the opinion of the clinic worker, who obviously has a larger sample size than I do.
My husband (not the boyfriend of the story, we broke up on good terms three years after the abortion and he is also now married) comes with me for all medical appointments because I have social anxiety, especially around medical personnel. Sometimes the gyn thinks I’m odd for having him around for the pap smear, but nobody has ever kicked him out.
To me, having my boyfriend there wasn’t about it being “also about him” but about him having contributed to the situation as much as I had, and dammit, he was going to have to take some responsibility as well. That responsibility included supporting me while puking with morning sickness, holding my hand during the abortion, helping me hide it from my mother, and taking care of me during the brief recovery period. I don’t know; I wouldn’t date someone who was an ass about these kinds of things (not to say I wouldn’t have sex with such a person), but maybe, like you, my sample of men is biased.
Dr. Confused — I think that having that level of anxiety would probably be a red flag for a worker and they would want to question you more about it. If your bf were pressuring you into doing something you didn’t want to do and you thought you could get through it if he were in the room with you while it was happening… wouldn’t you rather the worker pick up on that and try to give you an opportunity to express what was really going on? And yeah — if I were knocked up and I were exhibiting a lot of negativity towards my husband for “doing this to me” I’d want the clinic worker to keep him the fuck out of the procedure room even if I wanted him there so that I wouldn’t make a total ass of myself in my moment of stress and vulnerability.
And I would ESPECIALLY want the clinic worker to keep the bf/DH out of the procedure room if they had gotten even the slightest hint that this wasn’t something he was comfortable with — because there’s no telling what he’ll do once the speculum is out: he could faint and hurt himself, he could start attacking the doctors for murdering “his baby.”
It would be great if clinics had the funding and staff to be able to give every male partner a short counseling session to help them talk through their feelings on an abortion, but I think for the time I’d rather have that money and manpower going to keep the clinic safe, and keeping the pathways to the door clear.
I’m beyond late to this party, but I just wanted to touch on why I hate this song and why I think Ben Folds is such an insufferable prick for writing it. Yes, him personally, not the narrator of the song or whatever.
“Brick” sends me into a fit of peevishness every time I hear it (or even hear mention of it) precisely because it demonstrates what the fuck is wrong with the dialog about abortion in this culture.
First of all, if there’s one thing that’s readily apparent in this song, it’s that Folds doesn’t give a fuck about his girlfriend’s feelings or the psycological burden she has had to bear. I don’t care what your interpretation of the word “brick” is; despite the fact that the climax of the song is that she has a fucking psycological breakdown, the girlfriend is treated in this song not as a person, but as a set of events — something that has happened to Folds, not a partner. I could go on — through a critical eye, this is not a difficult song to interpret. But I’ll just leave it at that.
Now, the fact that Folds wrote yet another vapid pop song about his hurt fee-fees is not particularly notable, except he happened to write it about this particular topic. Even that might not be quite so egregious, if we were living in a society in which getting an abortion was treated with the same “it happens to everybody” mentality as, say, breaking up with your girlfriend. But it’s not. But Folds still felt it appropriate to write a song about his hurt fee-fees in regard to something that directly, physically affected only his girlfriend, apparently all without wasting one thought on the fact that she herself doesn’t have the same freedom to express her own side of the story with regard to the abortion.
Folds’ ex-girlfriend is, by his own account, a real person who actually exists out in the world. This woman, who apparently has already had to deal with a lot of pain and shame and forced silence about the abortion she had, now has the pleasure of being permanently enshrined in song, a song about something that happened to her, in her body and yet is somehow inexplicably about someone else’s feelings. That makes Folds a selfish prick.
Imagine if a woman had written this song about her own abortion experience. If, by some miracle, such a song had made it on the pop radio airwaves (it wouldn’t have), she would have been made out to be a horrible monster and her career would have been over, and/or the song would have been twisted by the talking heads into a message about why abortion is a badbadbad thing. It most definitely would not have been regarded as a charming-but-melancholy radio hit for people to play at proms and sing at karaoke.
So Ben Folds, the dudes in Martin’s Alternet article and apparently a number of people in this thread are just overwhelmed with how difficult abortion is for men. Cry me a fucking river. You can clutch your pearls until the cows come home about how men aren’t allowed to express their feelings blah blah blah, but the notion that dudes don’t have free reign to bloviate about their feelings with regard to abortion is a patently false load of shit. Let me summon the clue train for you: the mere fact that the song “Brick” exists and was constantly played on pop radio for years is proof positive that men have plenty of latitude to talk about abortion, explore their feelings about abortion, express how abortion affects them and publically reveal their past histories with abortion, all without having to fear that their careers will be ruined or worse. And “Brick” is no isolated incident; I can think of a vast number of references to abortion in popular culture, and 99% of them come from the mouths of men.
Meanwhile, if women want to talk about their experiences with abortion, they are culturally required to do it in hushed, ashamed voices, or not at all. Ben Folds can write a hit song about how he “had” an abortion (*snort*) but the women who actually go through these procedures can’t even breathe wrong or they’ll be publically castigated as monsters.
Oh, for god’s sake!! Now you’re picking on Song for the Dumped? Ben was singing in CHARACTER!! As he did with Hiro’s Song, and as he did in Bitches Ain’t Shit, as he did in All You Can Eat, as he does in many songs!!
In CHARACTER!!
*Shaking Head*
Ben Folds is one of the most brilliant singer/songwriters in the history of music. You people are hopeless and deliberately obtuse in the search for things to offend you.
I give up.
Well, but you have to admit it’s better than, “my girlfriend had to get an abortion,” isn’t it? Shows a certain acceptance of responsibility . . .
Well, no, I don’t have to admit that ;-P I can see how it would be interpreted as him taking responsibility, but I saw it as self-centered. I get annoyed in the same way when couples say “We’re pregnant.” That’s cute and all, but… no.
I can’t say I ever saw an explicit good guy or bad guy in this song.
I always interpreted it as the pressure of the abortion’s skullduggery and then aftermath weighed too heavily on the relationship. A relationship, I must add, with two young and immature people who were at least smart enough to do the “right” thing.
I’d be interested to hear “her” side of the story, but I don’t know if I’d call the narrator as narcissistic as you say.
It’s definitely biased, but in a “from the journal he keeps under his pillow” sort of way.
Shelley, get a fucking grip. You don’t know him, he wouldn’t piss on you to put you out if you were on fire, and frankly, doesn’t it make you wonder a little that he keeps returning to this “character” in so many of his songs?
As for him being the most brilliant singer/songwriter in history — you remind me of the Simpsons episode where Bleeding Gums Murphy dies and Homer is trying to console Lisa who wants to pay him tribue by suggesting she get a tattoo.
Homer: It preserves the ones you love [lifts sleeve and reads tattoo] Starland Vocal Band…? They suck!
Mighty Ponygirl,
I hide my anxiety well. They only pick up on it if they take my blood pressure (and then they just think I’m naturally hypotensive…)
I was asked if I wanted my boyfriend in the room during a private pre-abortion counseling session. So he wasn’t there at the time, and I’m sure they could have spun it as their own rules if I didn’t want to be the heavy.
I do sometimes wonder if my healthcare providers are worried about domestic abuse in my case. I literally have my husband there for every appointment. I keep expecting someone to kick him out to ask me “does he insist on being here so you can’t tell anyone about your relationship?” or something. Hasn’t happened yet, though.
I also hate the “we’re pregnant” thing. I’m pregnant, We’re expecting a baby. He doesn’t have to go through the physical trials of pregnancy,
Ben Folds’ musical talent entirely aside, I guess I am very confused as to why you condemn men who want to take some part in a woman’s pregnancy or abortion IN PARTNERSHIP with her. If she wants him to be part of it, why is that such a problem? If my husband and I get pregnant, as you can tell, I will sure a s%*t feel like he is part of the process. I expect him to come to every Drs appointment, I want him to be my partner and feel like the fetus is something he contributed to the creation of.
When my sister got pregnant, she wanted her boyfriend there for the abortion. She wanted him to feel a sense of responsibility to her and for the medical process that she had to go through. She damn well expected him to feel some sense of obligation to deal with “the parasite” that he helped create.
I can assure you that I in no way view women as property born to serve the interests and needs of men. But I do think there are many reasons why a man might have legitimate feelings about a woman’s pregnancy. For example, he could be worried about his wife/girlfriend/lover’s physical and emotional wellbeing.
I guess I don’t understand why we have to totally dismiss male feelings on this issue. Yes it is my body, and I get to choose what happens to any fetus in my body. Yes I am the one having the abortion. That doesn’t mean that the man involved is inherently some evil, unfeeling robot unable to have legitimate feelings about it as well.
Sure, I would be furious if the guy involved was whinging on about how hard having an abortion is for him. I’m sure there are way too many guys like that out there. But can we all agree that perhaps there are men out there able to have conflicted feelings and still act like mature, responsible, supportive human beings towards the woman having the abortion?
I’m having a real hard time with the concept that, because you express your feelings about a painful subject, you are automatically making it All About You. You can’t very well express someone *else’s* feelings without fictionalizing them, because you don’t know what they are; you can only ever talk about yourself with authority. So this guy had the temerity to have an opinion about his girlfriend’s abortion and express it? Ooh, crucify him.
When I was in grad school, I had a boyfriend who was suffering from depression. He wouldn’t talk to me, he had black moods where he wouldn’t come to bed, he would cut himself, etc. His depression wasn’t about me, it was about something chemical in his brain. I had no impact on it one way or another. But because he was behaving like a depressed person, he was having a profound impact on me, the person in a relationship with him. He was, in fact, a brick, around my neck, and he nearly drowned me. I did my best to be supportive, but eventually I told him that he would either have to fix his emotional issues and stop dragging me down with him, or he would have to hit the road, because *I* could not handle the downward pull of his depression.
Does that make me a self-centered asshole who wanted his depression to be All About Me? Or does that make me a human, with feelings of my own, who was being sucked into a black hole by my love for a person who was incapable of being happy with his life?
Abortion is a tougher issue because, of course, the reason she had to get an abortion is because he had sex with her, so to a certain degree it’s his fault. But if she’s so sad and depressed over the abortion that she’s bringing him down, is he not allowed to be unhappy? I don’t see any sense that he thinks she is evil or a bad person, only that he can’t handle how unhappy she is because it’s pulling him down too. And I’m sorry, but if you’ve ever had to deal with a person with clinical depression, yes, it can destroy you. And if you feel guilt over why they’re depressed, that just makes it worse. And if you then had someone telling you that you daring to have feelings about the fact that your loved one is deeply unhappy and it’s pulling you under makes you an asshole, or at least you’re an asshole if you express those feelings in art, well, I imagine that would make it worse as well.
Abortion’s a red herring here. The song is about being depressed *because* your loved one is depressed, and not knowing what to do to help them, and feeling that they are dragging you down with them. The reason could have just as easily been she had a miscarriage, she had a brain tumor, her dad died, she is randomly suffering from clinical depression for no good reason. For any of those reasons, she is depressed, and her depression is pulling him down with her, and I’m sorry, but people have a right to be unhappy because the person they love is unhappy. You wouldn’t react this way if it were me writing a song about my depressed boyfriend being a brick that was drowning me, because I’m a woman and because he didn’t get an abortion, so the sexual politics/right to choose stuff would not be there. But it’s the same emotional state. If he told his girlfriend to her face, at the time, that her mental state was destroying him, then he’d have been an asshole (at least if he didn’t wait for several months trying to help her get better), but the song makes it sound like he’s trying to be supportive while still having these dark feelings.
Ben Folds is one of the most brilliant singer/songwriters in the history of music.
Okay, this has got to be a joke. Gosh, yes, in the history of great singer/songwriters, there’s Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello and … Ben Folds.
One of these things is not like the other.
I don’t get why it’s so radioactive to allow men to have some authentic voice about abortion. The current approved rhetoric seems to be that good pro-choice men are only allowed to say “It’s her decision and I’ll stand by her.” This is actually a bit crippling, because it doesn’t allow men to express their very real stake in abortion rights: for every woman relieved to have an abortion, there’s probably a man who’s also relieved. And just as we acknowledge that woman can have varying emotional reactions, why can’t we acknowlege that men can have emotional reactions too? Sure, the stakes aren’t equal, but it’s not a zero-sum game. To me, it seems that if you allow men to tell their stories and say “Yeah, protect abortion rights, because I don’t want to be a parent before I’m ready either,” that you strengthen the cause, not weaken it.
As for being self-centered…well, we all are, aren’t we? If you’ve never had to be the support person while your partner goes through a traumatic life event, then you probaby shouldn’t criticize what’s merely a verbal expression of something most caretakers feel at some point…
You wouldn’t react this way if it were me writing a song about my depressed boyfriend being a brick that was drowning me, because I’m a woman and because he didn’t get an abortion, so the sexual politics/right to choose stuff would not be there.
Let’s make it about another medical issue, then. Let’s say that he wrote a song about what a drag his girlfriend was being about having cancer, and how her reaction to having cancer was making him really depressed.
Still feel like that’s a completely human and normal reaction to your loved one having cancer that should be expressed in a song?
Somewhere in here is an SNL skit, like the old Bill Murray/Gilda Radner one; “First He Cries”, spoofing the old “Disease of The Week” movie. Yes, the one where Gilda is playing the wife who’s in the hospital for a masectomy after she’s been diagnosed with breast cancer; she’s laughing and joking with the hospital vistors, while Bill the sullen husband, sulking in the corner, snaps “Everyone is worried about HER! What about ME? I’m the one who’s married to Miss Uni-Boob!”
Death Cab For Cutie wrote a really beautiful song about how horrible it is to have a loved one who is suffering. There isn’t really the same self-pitying undertones of Brick.
Brick could have been a better song if it weren’t for the friggin’ chorus. You can’t spin “She’s a brick and she’s dragging me down” as anything but someone feeling burdened by the object. There’s no “I’m feeling very sad because the person I love is in pain” or even “this is really hard on me, to have a part in this problem.” It’s “She’s dragging me down.” Everything was fine until SHE got pregnant, and now I’M being dragged down by her.
mnemosyne, in fact yes I do think that exact same song could be written about a loved one with cancer. As I said above, while my grandfather was dying, of cancer, Brick spoke to my feelings very directly. If you read any literature on care giving - resentment, anger, confusion and guilt are pretty standard and, I would argue, healthy emotional reactions.
There were times when I hated my grandfather because of how his suffering negatively impacted my life. There were times when I secretly wished he would just die. Isn’t that awful! I sure thought so, and people like you are why I kept those feelings to myself for so long. It ate me up inside and I was not emotionally well for a long time after his actual death. Thankfully I finally talked to someone about it, and then read everything I could find about care giving someone who is suffering, and I finally feel ok about those horrible feelings. Because I know they are normal.
Just as a total aside, since I don’t actually think this conversation should be about Ben Folds…but his music is almost entirely satire. It is Ben Folds Five, yet there are only 3 people in the band. Seriously, he’s making fun of the ass holes that he is acting out in his songs. Youtube “Rockin the Suburbs”, he’s making fun of white male privilege; he’s got Weird Al in the video for goodness sake. Everyone has different musical tastes but I do personally put Ben Folds pretty close to people like Elvis Costello (though no one can actually match Elvis of course).
I thought the same thing. When I had my abortion my mother came with me, and they wouldn’t let her back there either, even though I was a minor at the time and I would have liked having her with me. They told us it was for security, to protect the other women that were back there. I wasn’t at Planned Parenthood either, it was a much larger medical building.
Chiming in after the doors have closed here … but if Ben Folds really wanted to portray his girlfriend as sturdy, strong and reliable, wouldn’t the lyric instead have been:
She’s a brick but I’m drowning slowly…
That is, consciously comparing himself to his girlfriend’s strength and highlighting his own lack? The choice of conjunction suggests that she is the reason he’s drowning.
The song might be a discussion of abortion from the POV of a teenager … but it was written and performed by an adult. Folds et. al. should have been more responsible.
As for judging the songwriter/performer based on a narrator’s voice: Valid. Artists are responsible for their works.
Another reason to keep the men out of the procedure room - some men pass out at the sight of blood. Even with childbirth, there are a significant percentage of men that pass out. You don’t want two patients. A year or two ago, some father passed out, hit his head, got a big head bleed, had neurological impairment as a result.
I hold no particular brief for “Brick” — there are some Ben Folds songs I kinda like, but “Brick” is not one of them — but I can’t buy into the argument that a singer (or writer, or actor, etcetera) who empathetically inhabits an awful point-of-view character necessarily shares on some level the same traits that makes that character so awful.
Partly, this is because I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to believe that Ray Davies is a closet pedophile (”Art Lover”), that Anthony Hopkins harbors fantasies of killing and eating people (The Silence Of The Lambs, Hannibal, Nixon), or that Warren Zevon thought rape, murder and necrophilia were light-hearted fun best accompanied by surf guitar (”Excitable Boy”).
Mostly, though, it’s because good artists are supposed to make you believe what it is they’re presenting, and this works both ways. I don’t believe that John Milton was a Satanist or that Hugh Grant is sweet, sensitive, inhibited and bashful, no matter how the Devil is portrayed in Paradise Lost or Hugh Grant’s characters are portrayed in Sirens, The Remains Of The Day or Sense And Sensibility. So why should I necessarily believe it when the balance of evil runs in the other direction?
Nancy, a first-trimester abortion is not a big bloody mess. There’s very little blood or gore anywhere. My boyfriend was up at my head, holding my hand.
Amanda, I too think you’re being particularly unkind in your interpretation. I got the impression that while the girlfriend may have been a brick around him, that he was also probably a brick around her neck, and that the narrator understands this. That the abortion killed their relationship; that neither of them could get past it, and couldn’t look at each other without thinking of the abortion. He didn’t just immediately dump her - they tried to make it work for weeks afterward (”As weeks went by it showed that she was not fine”) but there was no repairing the relationship (”she broke down, and I broke down”).
The song would be “indescribably mean” if he had thought “well now she’s just weepy so I’m going to break up with her” but the song clearly states that that wasn’t what happened at all. At no point do I get the impression that he was blaming his girlfriend (or anyone) for anything. It was not having an abortion that made her into a brick; it was their mutual inability to get over the abortion.
Furthermore, I also get the impression that the song is written from a perspective some years after the fact, only wallowing in his bad feelings AFTER he attended to his girlfriend’s needs. I get the impression that at the time of the event, he did not try and make it all about himself.
I’m not sure I can think of a way in which a guy COULD express his feelings that wouldn’t make you think he was trying to make it all about him. It seems like you’re upset that he didn’t write the song to be all about the girlfriends - although in that case, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear “how dare he try to speak for women.”
That’s exactly the problem - in the narrator’s circumstances, because they wanted to keep the abortion a secret, he had no one to talk to except his girlfriend, and he recognized that he couldn’t burden her with that, so he had no outlet for his bad feelings, and that corrupted their relationship.
I don’t get what the problem is with this. The narrator involved himself exactly as much as was appropriate; did everything he could to be involved in the process, instead of leaving it up to her to deal with.
I think you’re WAY off base in assuming that the narrator/Ben is putting his feelings ahead of hers. There’s nothing in the song to justify that belief. He clearly is willing to spend time, money, and emotional effort on her, indicating that he put her needs FIRST and is only later getting around to addressing his own. When you say things like the “rubbing his back” comment, you’re just pulling it out of thin air.
Oh, you mean exactly like the song says he did? Or what?
It’s treated that way because it IS something that happened to him - years and years in the past!
What the fuck are you talking about? She has every right and ability to write her own song. Again, it just sounds like you’re upset that he didn’t write the song from her perspective - a perspective he could not possibly know enough to write from!
And this is Ben Folds’ fault…how?
If you read any literature on care giving - resentment, anger, confusion and guilt are pretty standard and, I would argue, healthy emotional reactions.
True … unless you express them to the person you’re taking care of. If you had expressed to your grandfather how much you resented him, I think people would have been well justified in thinking you were an asshole for doing so. However, expressing those feelings to an objective and non-judgmental person like a professional therapist is not only healthy, it’s necessary. Because while it’s normal to resent the person, it’s not normal or healthy to take that resentment out on the person who’s sick. See the difference?
Frankly, I think that part of the problem here (both with the song and with the wider problem) is that men are taught that the only person they’re allowed to vent their emotions to is their wife or girlfriend, even if their wife or girlfriend is the one who is the one causing those emotions. So when something happens like an illness or an abortion, the only way for these guys to get any emotional release is to express their feelings to the one person who really doesn’t need that burden as well as the one she’s already dealing with. For which, once again, I blame the patriarchy. (Oh, like that wasn’t going to come up.)
[quote]I’d guess that the majority of women include the men that knocked them up to the degree that he’s the single most important person for her throughout the process, driving her in the car, holding her hand, listening, helping her sort it out.[/quote]
You forgot, “paying for it.”
LOL, ok I’m happy to blame the patriarchy as well. Yes, if the person takes out their resentment on the already suffering one, then they are a jerk. Though there were times I wasn’t exactly ms. sunshine, even though everyone told me I should be.
I guess my strong reaction to this post is because I feel like we are telling someone what they should feel. We are telling men they should feel nothing when their lover has an abortion. I think we are very reasonable to tell men how we think they should act in such a situation, but I get very twitchy when I hear anyone telling anyone else the “proper” way to feel.
I don’t know; I wouldn’t date someone who was an ass about these kinds of things
I don’t know if I’d put “not wanting to watch a D&C” straight into the ass category, though. That doesn’t preclude bringing soup and holding hands and letting you pick what’s on TV while you recover.
But yeah, I have had appalling low standards in the past for getting support from boyfriends. Now I have a weird situation where I’m slowly relearning that it’s okay to ask for support. In the past, I always did run a risk of the support being given so grudgingly I quickly learned that I was basically on my own for everything.
i liked the song-y part of the song but the thing that bugs me the most about it is that, as has been mentioned by a few people, it’s yet another f’ing song about abortion sung by a man. wasn’t freshmen by the verve pipe also about abortion? i really had no idea what that song was about:
Now I’m guilt stricken,
Sobbing with my head on the floor
Stop a baby’s breath and a shoe full of rice
I can’t be held responsible
She was touching her face
I won’t be held responsible
She fell in love in the first place
….
My best friend took a week’s
Vacation to forget her
His girl took a weeks’s worth of
Valium and slept
And now he’s guilt stricken sobbing with his
Head on the floor
Thinks about her now and how he never really
Wept he says
is it about drug abuse? abortion? breaking up with your first love? no idea.
tim mcgraw sang red ragtop and aside from the part where he’s a man and i’m sick of abortion stories coming from men, i think it’s fairly decent:
Well the very first time her mother met me,
Her green eyed girl was a mother to be for 2 weeks
I was out of a job and she was in school,
Life was fast and the world was cruel
We were young and wild, we decided not to have a child
So we did what we did and we tried to forget
And we swore up and down there would be no regrets
….
In the morning light,
But on the way home that night
We took one more trip around the sun,
It was all make believe in the end,
No I can’t say where she is today,
I can’t remember who I was, back then
Well you do what you do and you pay for your sins,
And there’s no such thing as what might’ve
Been, that’s a waste of time; drive you outta your mind
Ben Folds’ musical talent entirely aside, I guess I am very confused as to why you condemn men who want to take some part in a woman’s pregnancy or abortion IN PARTNERSHIP with her.
Because laying claim to another person’s experiences is weird. I don’t think co-dependency is healthy, at all. Intimate relationships work better if each person in it keeps her identity full and whole and doesn’t subsume part of it to the relationship.
Which I suppose is my objection also to matching clothes, “our” song and the scene in “Knocked Up” where the wife flipped shit because her husband doesn’t spend every non-working moment with her.
I am not dismissing men’s feelings. Repeat, since this is so hard to understand: I AM NOT DISMISSING MEN’S FEELINGS. I am simply saying that an abortion is going to be about the woman more than the man and I reject any and all attempts to make it more about him. Unless you think a man’s feelings are not being adequately tended to unless he’s the center of the universe—and admittedly, a lot of men feel this way—then you can’t say that I’m “dismissing” men.
Does that make me a self-centered asshole who wanted his depression to be All About Me?
No, but if you then went on to write a song where you posited that the major problem with his depression was it bothered you, then yes, you are an asshole. The major issue here is that he’s very dismissive to the girlfriend—you don’t get a glimmer of pity for her problems, really. There might be a way to perform this song so that the lines about how she feels so alone draw attention to the fact that she is dating a dick (the narrator), but Ben Folds does not perform it that way.
I will say the song portrays the self-centered attitude of men who want abortion to be all about them very well, which is why I referenced it. There’s an earnestness to that, though, that sets my teeth on edge. If he showed a glimmer of recognition that abortion is not, in fact, all about him and that the narrator’s reactions suck (even if forgiveably so, since he’s a teenager), then I would probably feel differently about it.
I don’t get why it’s so radioactive to allow men to have some authentic voice about abortion. The current approved rhetoric seems to be that good pro-choice men are only allowed to say “It’s her decision and I’ll stand by her.”
Not saying that. Saying that a man can’t say, “I’m the most important person in this situation.” Please defend that statement if you want to argue with me. And my point is at this point, asking for more attention if you knock someone up and she has to get an abortion is to ask to be #1. The impregnator is, most of the time, #2. To move up the ladder, he has to be #1. So, please make the argument that he should be #1 most important person of the abortion experience if you want to argue with my real point.
but I can’t buy into the argument that a singer (or writer, or actor, etcetera) who empathetically inhabits an awful point-of-view character necessarily shares on some level the same traits that makes that character so awful.
Phew, thank god I didn’t say that. I did note that this song is pretty straightforward—it’s too earnest to interpret as “unreliable narrator”—but it does illustrate well a certain strain of assholery. But in no way, shape, or form did I argue that a narrator the expresses disturbing feelings says something about the song’s worthiness by definition or the singer. In some cases more than others, yes. But obviously, no one is arguing that there’s some sort of standard interpretation of all song narrators forever and ever amen. In this particular song, it’s a stretch to pretend the singer is playing a character as a villain, like Johnny Cash does in a lot of his songs. The combination of earnestness and sexism of this particular song is toxic—he’s being sexist and he wants the ladies to pity him for being so sensitive.
MH, I think context is relevant. The song was released in a space where men are allowed a lot of self-aggrandizing pity over abortion but women are permitted to feel guilty at best, and self-loathing at worst. The song is mean. Imagine how many women out there who’ve had men guilt-trip them precisely like this over abortion had to suffer this song over and over and over again.
Fizgig, her point is exactly mine. Men are already #2. To move up the ladder (and to do things like demand a right to be in the operating room), they have to be #1, and have the girlfriend or wife coddle them as if they’re the ones with the REAL problem. There’s no quick fix for feeling rotten about a bad situation. I’ll admit to being baffled by any guy who feels anything short of relief at an abortion, but whatever. You feel what you feel. But sometimes growing up and sucking it up is actually a good coping mechanism.
Don’t really know the song, so won’t comment there. But as far as the Courtney Martin article goes, she is most definitely implying that women are responsible for caring for men’s feelings:
“The pro-choice movement, and feminists in general, seem to have historically shied away from the difficult but imperative task of involving men in conversations about abortion.”
In that framing, women are responsible to involve men in the conversation. Why do men not have the responsibility to care for themselves? Why must women take on the task of liberating men “from the shackles of silence” when women still feel those chains themselves?
The guy “Jeff” in the story felt “abandoned” in the waiting room, and asks why there wasn’t someone there to talk to him, and says that if men were talking about their experiences then “it would bring added depth and understanding to the issue.”
But his entire framing is that until a woman interviews him for the article, unless someone comes and cares for him in the waiting room– not just that he can’t go back to support his partner, but that *no one was caring for him*– his needs are not getting met. He shows no recognition that he has any responsibility to get his emotional needs met himself.
I agree with what she says in terms of the fact that men can and should contribute to and be included in the conversation. But women should at the very most make some space for men’s voices (and even that is complex because so often making space for men’s voices means silencing our own). We should not shoulder their burden as well as our own.
The academic that Martin mentions, Arthur Shostak, and the nascent movement that he seems to be at the vanguard of, seem to me to have the right idea. Men can talk to and support each other in this. We’ve got our own work to do.
Well, and I find the idea that feminists are some gate-keepers and that men have not been allowed into the conversation to be utterly false. If there are more women than men talking about abortion from a pro-choice perspective, it’s because more women feel it’s an important issue. I’ve never seen men shoved out. Plenty of my favorite pro-choice bloggers are men. Men don’t seem to feel like they don’t have a right to an opinion. Shit, Ezra Klein pointed out that it’s really unfair to women to have 8 men and one woman on the Supreme Court making all the decisions about women’s rights and people were howling. How dare we say that there’s something unseemly about men completely dominating the discussion about the women’s rights, at least when the decisions are being made? Do we hate men? Anything short of giving men total power is taken as some sort of slam on men’s rights.
yugenue — you’re absolutely right. In the great debate about what kind of a boyfriend Ben Folds is, this is exactly what needed to be said.
And to be clear, I think that talking about this in the context of abortion is different than talking about it in terms of other less politically loaded issues like illness or aging or other caregiver situations. I think the gendered aspect of the abortion conversation is important and crucial in terms of context. Not that men don’t, or can’t, or shouldn’t, have feelings or talk about them or get them addressed… but that men can’t, and shouldn’t, expect that women will take care of that for them. I just don’t think it’s the “movement’s” responsibility to ensure that male partners are taken care of– certainly not when ensuring access to abortion itself is taking every resource available.
In terms of the chronic illness thing, my partner and I actually have a great deal of personal experience with that. I think it’s a more nuanced conversation for a lot of reasons, not the least that the caregiving for other things such as illness are more likely to go both ways through the course of a relationship.
shoot! Please let me try that last sentence again:
“I think it’s a more nuanced conversation for a lot of reasons, not least that the caregiving for other things such as illness *is* more likely to go both ways through the course of a relationship.”
Ironically, I’m currently watching this discussion about abortion, where you can clearly see how the feminist overlords have kept men out of the discussion.
Oh, and Amanda at 94: right on! Well said! And thank you, Mighty Ponygirl.
OK, this is a whole lot from me. Going back to lurk mode in 3… 2… 1….
For people who are still confused about the difference between “having feelings” and “expressing feelings”:
My ex-boyfriend’s mother had a perfect right to her feeling that she should have had the abortion that her parents wanted her to have instead of having him and marrying his father. What made her an asshole was telling her son that she felt this way, especially since she did it in front of me.
See the difference?
When Brick first came out, everytime I heard it, it disgusted me. It’s really the refrain “She’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly.” Repeat: “She’s a brick.”
Amanda’s complaint is entirely justified.
The treacly sound of the piano and the oh-so-precious-my-drained-emotions voice of Ben Folds almost ALMOST made me think that it was perhaps a panning of such ’sentiment’.
But I don’t think so.
The difference between Brick and far, far greater songs of heavyhearted emotion, is that Brick just sinks, sinks along with the narrator. It goes nowhere; it does not tap any emotion other than the immediate bummed out feeling.
It is the type of song akin to re-arranging Mike Rutherford’s “In these Living Years” to say that his father’s death really bummed him out. Bummer!
“Brick” pretty much poisoned any interest I would have had in Ben Folds Five. Everytime I hear someone’s a fan, I immediately think of that song and the sort of touchstone of ‘women as drags’ that has been playing on that broken down player piano of society’s conscious. You touch them intimately and look what happens! What a drag!
I hadn’t heard the song, but, checking the link to the lyrics, I think I’d like it better without the chorus. The verses have a certain parallelism that actually does seem to acknowledge her feelings - moving from him feeling more alone than he ever has before to her feeling similarly alone (perhaps partly because his teenaged self wasn’t able to be there for her as he seems, in the verses, to at least partly mean to) to her breaking down. But then the chorus wrecks that, and makes it seem as if the main theme of the song is how she’s dragging him down.
A companion (boyfriend, friend, mother, etc) is allowed in many (I have no idea about what percentage across the nation) clinics. At the two planned parenthoods I volunteered at in addition to the companion, each patient had a “patient advocate”, which is what I did. Basically that means I held their hand if they wanted, talked to them, let them how much more time was left, reminded them to breath deeply and relax, etc. The patient was asked if they wanted the companion, and then the doctor or nurse told whoever was accomanying the patient (if there was someone) whether they could be in the room. At any time, if they felt the companion was not being supportive enough, they were told to leave, and I would escort them out (VERY rare). LOTS of clinics have these types of companions or escorts, many of them are volunteers. I can’t say enough what an amazing, important, and at times difficult job this is. If you’re interested in doing this, you should contact you local planned parenthood/abortion clinic, and ask if they have such a program you can help with.
Brick is not a song I like, but as someone who had an abortion, I understood the feelings he was expressing, and it spoke to me emotionally, and helped me come to terms with my grief over the abortion - not regret, because I don’t for one second regret having the abortion - but my grief.
I’ve seen Ben Folds in concert a few times, and he’s no asshole. He doesn’t have the sublime songwriting skills of an Elvis Costello, but he writes enjoyable music with enjoyable and often funny lyrics. I like him as a musician, I like him as an entertainer, and while y’all can feel free to unleash your fury that he dared to have feelings about his girlfriend having an abortion, I’ll continue to buy his records and see him in concert - he’s great live and from everything I’ve seen and read, incredibly generous to up and coming musicians.
But again, I don’t see how the fact that women aren’t permitted as much expression means that men should curtail their own expression. That ability should be extended to women, yes, but that doesn’t mean it should be taken away from men, unless this is somehow a zero-sum situation, which I don’t see it as. Also, I don’t think it is established that the song is mean; it’s only mean if you assume he’s saying these things right at the girlfriend, and not many years after the fact, to an audience of strangers. The meanness is something you’re choosing to read into the song, and not necessarily part of it.
What makes you think this song was meant as or even describes a guilt-trip he laid on her, and not instead a moment of self-pity he gave himself only after attending to her needs and trying to salvage the relationship? I think you have to take the chorus, which I’ll admit looks ugly on its own, in context of the rest of the song, which clearly shows the guy doing the right thing (abortion), being attentive (buying flowers), being not-horribly-selfish (selling his Christmas gifts to pay for it all), and not giving up on the girl (”weeks went by”). He’s clearly not as unkind and aloof as people are portraying him (”You touch [women] intimately and look what happens! What a drag!”).
Well this isn’t as simple as all that. On the one hand, yes, a guy does have some responsibility to meet his own needs, but I don’t think it’s fair to assume that because he’s asking for SOME attention that he’s asking for ALL or even MOST of the attention. There’s a bigger difference between having zero and one person to talk to, than between one and ten.
I haven’t read the article, so maybe something else in there clears this up, but I know if I were in the situation described, and no one cared what I thought or felt, I’d be a little annoyed too. A guy shouldn’t expect anything like equal time with his girlfriend but he ought to get a little more recognition than a cab driver would have got.
And hey, maybe the facility is just so understaffed that they can’t spare anyone to come talk to the guy, but you’d think there could at least be some pamphlet he could be reading - “So Your Girlfriend’s Decided to Have an Abortion.” That might even be better, actually, since so many guys feel they can’t talk directly to non-partners, but they could be comfortable reading about how to deal with their feelings. It could even be a sort of emotional troubleshooting guide, complete with charts of the most common psychological issues surrounding abortion, giving a list of things he should do for both his own mental health and advice on how to help her cope.
I think it’s worth mentioning that there ARE gatekeepers here, but it’s not the women; it’s the men themselves that don’t permit open discussion.
i liked the song-y part of the song but the thing that bugs me the most about it is that, as has been mentioned by a few people, it’s yet another f’ing song about abortion sung by a man. wasn’t freshmen by the verve pipe also about abortion?
Oddly, “The Freshman” never bothered me, even though it’s way more melodramatic than “Brick,” because the whole point of the song is that the narrator is looking back years later and realizing that he was an asshole. The melodrama comes from guilt at his actions.* “Brick” is the narrator looking back and complaining that he didn’t get enough attention during his girlfriend’s abortion.
* I’m pretty sure that the whole “valium” part is that his friend’s girlfriend committed (or at least attempted) suicide after he broke up with her and the guy now feels guilty that he decided at the time that it was her own fault.
“[I’m] saying that a man can’t say, “I’m the most important person in this situation.” Please defend that statement if you want to argue with me. And my point is at this point, asking for more attention if you knock someone up and she has to get an abortion is to ask to be #1. The impregnator is, most of the time, #2. To move up the ladder, he has to be #1. So, please make the argument that he should be #1 most important person of the abortion experience if you want to argue with my real point.”
Well I guess I’d ask, what realm are you arguing in — politics, academics, rhetoric, ethics, your own personal history? I’m talking about politics and PR here, where in order to get votes you have to make EVERYONE feel like they’re #1. I think that encouraging men to express a more personal stake in the abortion debate would be good, politically, because then they wouldn’t be able to pretend it’s just a women’s issue. And they’d be able to counter that anti-choice myth that abortions are caused by bad, bad men.
I’ve actually never heard the song Brick, but given the reactions here, I think I’d probably personally despise it as much as you do…
“…if you can’t tell the difference between a man having the right to have a feeling and a man having the right to demand that his feelings are more important than everyone else’s, no matter what, then there’s not much I can do to help you…”
Uh-huh. What about those who can’t tell the difference between having feelings and expressing them out loud? Amanda, why don’t you get that what you’re hearing in the song are the narrator’s inner thoughts? Show me one bit of evidence that the song’s narrator is “demanding that his feelings are more important than everyone else’s”, and I’ll agree he’s an asshole. Singing, “she’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly” doesn’t qualify, because again–inner thoughts. At least six people before me have tried to point out that there is no evidence that he inflicts these feelings on the girlfriend. Maybe I should use caps lock or something.
But again, I don’t see how the fact that women aren’t permitted as much expression means that men should curtail their own expression.
No one is asking men not to have feelings. Strawman. I’m simply saying that men should be grown-ups and realize that they aren’t the ones getting the damn abortion and that pouting because they’re not the center of attention is inappropriate. I think the song sounds like a long pout because his girlfriend is being a drag. If you read it different, good on you, but I find more generous interpretations a stretch.
The post is actually about Martin’s article. I don’t find there’s any evidence that men need more. To be more is to be #1 priority instead of #2. The song was an illustration, to my mind, of Sensitive Boy syndrome where men are treated like heroes for having feelings, even if those feelings are, “What about MEEEEE?”
What makes you think this song was meant as or even describes a guilt-trip he laid on her, and not instead a moment of self-pity he gave himself only after attending to her needs and trying to salvage the relationship?
The music, the way he sings it, the lack of winking at himself for being a dick for feeling this way. We all have nasty feelings. What is unacceptable is thinking that you don’t have to own that your nasty feelings are just that—nasty. To have a moment of self-pity is one thing. To treat your inappropriate self-pity as if it were an honorable feeling is something else entirely.
Good question, nau. I refer back to the article. What exactly do men need that they’re not already getting? The only thing Martin could think of was “more say”, but when men are a part of the decision process every step of the way, the only way they could have “more” is to have final say, and the final say should not be theirs, and I don’t think Martin thinks it should. So there’s nothing they could have except to be bumped up to the Most Important Person. That, and to be given some rather extraordinary right to be in the operation room, even if the clinic feels they have a very good reason to limit access? I don’t see a single realm where men are being left out any more than strictly necessary. The only way to give men more is to give them final power over a woman’s decision. Because I don’t see what men are lacking that they aren’t lacking strictly because it’s unconscionable to treat women’s bodies like male property.
On a personal level, if a guy I knew was struggling with the weird feelings that crop up with the fact that you can help start a pregnancy but after it’s in motion, it has nothing to do with you and abortion drives home that point, I’d suggest to him to treat it as a learning opportunity. Lesson: There’s a lot of things in this world that we are a part of but don’t ultimately control. And that’s okay. And in a lot of ways, it’s a relief. That you are not the person getting the abortion is not a bad thing; be grateful that nature let you off the hook. It’s not the worst thing in the world to face up to some unpleasant truths and realize that you will survive them.
I do think sucking it up is good for the soul sometimes. A little courage can give us experiences that make us proud of ourselves later. A guy who has all these weird feelings over losing control because his girlfriend is pregnant and getting an abortion and ultimately, it’s her decision will be a better man for it if he says, “Her body her choice” and really puts himself to the task of believing it. If you feel that it would be nice if she had the baby and she disagrees, it’s fine to say it once, but hammering at it accomplishes nothing and makes you a bad person with control issues. You’ll like yourself and be a better person if you practice the fine art of squelching your more childish feelings and practicing a little personal justice.
See, I wouldn’t have realized the song was about abortion if I hadn’t read this thread. I think I always interpreted it as being about two people struggling with depression and how hard it is on a relationship. Or it could be about grief, or any number of other things. I guess we all have different lenses?
Personally, I always thought the song was, “I have these shitty feelings, but I’m not the important one here, so those shitty feelings are eating me up inside because I can’t express these shitty feelings without being an asshole, and I don’t want to be an asshole.” I do think he’s calling his girlfriend a brick in an unflattering sense, but I don’t really get the sense he’s actually blaming her for him feeling that way. I have certainly felt someone was dragging me down with them, brick-like, without thinking they were horrible people for it. Maybe I’m actually an asshole too. This is possible!
I have to admit, I have a soft spot for Ben Folds, though. I love “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” and I love that he played piano for Weird Al’s pasiche of Ben Folds, “Why Does This Always Happen to Me?” The narrator in that one is definitely as self-centered and horrible as Amanda thinks Brick’s is.
I don’t see where you’re seeing that he’s blaming her for anything. He shows a lot of empathy for her. He’s seeing that she’s “balled up on the couch,” wretchedly miserable even before they leave for the appointment. He doesn’t blithely drop her off, but paces and buys her flowers with the money he got selling his Christmas presents. He recognizes that even though he is trying to be there for her, “she’s more alone than she’s ever been before.”
And time goes by and “she’s not fine”. They break down.
But the isolation remains. They can’t connect any more. But he can’t leave her because this pain is something they created together and he can’t abandon her to it.
Where’s the blame and judgmentalism there? Or are men not allowed to feel pain when their relationships are destroyed by things they thought were going to make it all okay?
“Brick” is the narrator looking back and complaining that he didn’t get enough attention during his girlfriend’s abortion.
Where are you seeing that? He repeatedly laments that she’s not okay, she’s alone even though he’s trying to be with her. They can’t connect any more. It’s the fact that what was supposed to make everything okay actually destroyed the only thing he really valued — having found somebody to love.
I guess we need new, PC lyrics:
6 am day after Christmas
I throw some clothes on in the dark
I am a cold
And heartless bastard
For having slept
I am dumb
Up the stairs to the apartment
She is hurting because of me
I should have lopped of my stupid balls
This is entirely my fault
And we drive
Now that I have found someone
I’m feeling the truth
That I’m a prick for hurting at all
She’s a goddess and I’m an asshole
I’m a man and that makes me worthless
She’s a goddess and I’m an asshole
They call her name at 7:30
I pace around the parking lot
I should have grown a uterus
And gone through this instead of her
Can’t you see
If she’s in pain it’s all my fault
Now she’s feeling more alone
Than she ever has before
She’s a goddess and I’m an asshole
I’m a man and that makes me worthless
She’s a goddess and I’m an asshole
As weeks went by
It showed that she was not fine
It’s because I wasn’t properly supportive
She broke down, and I broke down
But I had no right to
Driving home to her apartment
For a moment we’re alone
Yeah she’s alone
I’m a jerk
Now I know it
She’s a goddess and I’m an asshole
I’m a man and that makes me worthless
She’s a goddess and I’m an asshole
Here’s my favorite abortion-related song.
It’s kind of like giving someone an STD. You might not have meant to, and you might feel bad about it, and you might wish you could take it back, but crying about it is kind of crass. I’ll express myself further in poetry, as others have done.
How You Broke My Heart
by EmoDude
I gave you herpes
Now you look all sad
Gosh, that hurts my feelings.
Honey, don’t get so mad.
I’ll take you to the doctor
Things will be okay
Why are you still angry?
What’s wrong with you anyway?
It’s just a little herpes.
A whoops from me to you.
Here, have some flowers.
This is hurting me, too.
Now you’re crying again
You’re being such a drag.
We have something in common.
Is that really so bad?
This can keep us together
What’s with the look on your face?
It’s so hard to believe
You’re kicking me out of your place.
I can’t believe we broke up
I loved you oh so much
10 years later I can’t forget
How you just lost touch.
Oh my heart still aches
God, I feel so blue.
I’ll sing it in falsetto
to express my pain to you.
To me “Brick” is not primarily about an abortion, nor is it about one man’s (or one character’s) self-centeredness or lack thereof. Rather, I’ve always thought of it as the quintessential Gen X relationship song. It catches what so many of my peers’ relationships were like, or at least looked like from the outside: people together for no particular reason, displaying no strong feelings of either love or animosity, not appearing particularly happy but lacking the initiative to break up. The mood projected by these couples was lackadaisical at best, depressive at worst, and marked by passivity all along the spectrum.
I don’t sense that the couple in the song were ever passionately in love; the lyrics give no contrasting indication of happier times. Even the crisis caused by the pregnancy is viewed by the narrator, and perhaps by his girlfriend as well, through a depressive haze. “She’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly” clearly means the girl is dragging the narrator down - I don’t see how the competing interpretation offered above is plausible - but I found it impossible to resent the narrator for saying it, since it’s more an admission of his own lack of ballast than a standard misogynistic attack. He was already off the coast and headed nowhere without the girl - all she’s doing is speeding up the downward drift a bit. It’s also pretty clear that the dragging down in this relationship is mutual - the narrator as much as says so himself. “She’s feeling more alone than she’s ever felt before” is not exactly a flattering reflection on him and his thoughtfully purchased flowers, is it?
Honestly, I hated these slacker couples and their affect-free approach to relationships. “Brick” is a great song because it’s about such a couple and it moves me anyway. The details in the lyrics are so depressing - not just the spending the day after Christmas in the abortion clinic, but the getting up at an ungodly hour in the cold to do it, and the being free to do it because your parents drove off and left you behind. The most pathetic line of all, I think, is “And sell some gifts that I got” - the matter-of-fact acknowledgment of how disappointing our biggest holiday is, the next-day turnaround on the shitty gifts. The “weeks went by, and showed that she was not fine” in the middle eight is ambiguous - does that refer to the pregnancy, or to some more suicidal decline (what are those shadowy girl-in-bathtub images in the video)? Is this song endorsing the bullshit concept of post-abortion syndrome? I don’t even care, really. By that point, the song has already justified its existence on multiple levels.
Amanda’s hashed out her prejudices; these are mine.